Eleven-year-old Cara bought cigarettes over the Internet seventeen times. Most of the packages just showed up outside her door. One order she signed for herself.

Cara doesn’t smoke. She was volunteering for a study led by Kurt Ribisl, assistant professor of health behavior and health education at the School of Public Health and a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Under adult supervision, Cara and three other volunteers aged eleven to fifteen made eighty-three attempts to buy cigarettes over the Internet. Seventy-six of those attempts, or about 91 percent, were successful. Ribisl and doctoral students Rebecca Williams and Annice Kim published these results in the September 10, 2003, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was the first published study to document Internet sales of cigarettes to minors. Previous anecdotal reports or surveys have indicated that 2 to 3 percent of adolescents buy cigarettes on-line.

In Ribisl’s study, nine vendors claimed to require a copy of the buyer’s photo ID. But only four of them denied the purchase when no ID was submitted. The rest of the vendors sent the cigarettes anyway. And requiring a credit card wasn’t a deterrent. In thirty-five of the successful sales, volunteers used prepaid credit cards, which are marketed to teenagers. The rest were bought with money orders or a parent’s credit card.

Cara, now fourteen, was surprised by the ease of her purchases. “The sites said, ‘Click to verify that you are eighteen,’” she says. “I clicked, and I aged seven years I guess, because I was able to buy the cigarettes.”

To protect the kids from criminal charges, the researchers obtained immunity from the local district attorney, and adult supervisors actually clicked the final “submit” buttons or dropped money orders into the mail. But the children did most of the ordering themselves, including buying money orders with cash, then filling in the vendor’s name after returning to the researchers’ offices.

Most of the deliveries simply appeared outside the volunteers’ doors. Only seven of the packages were marked as tobacco. Four times, the young volunteers accepted the deliveries themselves, and only once did a delivery require an adult signature.

What can prevent kids from buying cigarettes for real? Ribisl points to legislation proposed in September by Congressman Martin Meehan from Massachusetts that asks for a federal law specifically banning Internet tobacco sales to minors. The proposed law would require Internet vendors to check a photo ID and get an adult signature at delivery.

UPS, for example, offers a shipping option that requires an adult signature. But that option costs about three dollars more per package. Vendors shouldn’t have to pay more than their competitors for being “good-guy merchants,” Ribisl says.

The vendors are doing a good job of warning people that they have to be eighteen to buy cigarettes, Ribisl says. “But they are not doing a good job of verifying age and following through on that promise.”



Supported by Carolina’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Michael and Laura Brader-Araje Foundation. No state funds were used to buy the cigarettes.